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Copy 1 



HANI>BOOK 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI 



WITH DETAILED DESOHIPTION OF 



Washington County. 



. M 



PUBLISHED ^ND ISSUED UNOEf( THE AUTHORITY AND WITH THE INDOFISEMENT 
OF THE MlSSOUIjl IMMIGRATION^ SOCIETY. 



.jk.^XD:EZ^&s 



C, S, GREELEY, President U. M, & S, Co, and W, L, & I^, Co, 

eiiO N. SECOND STREET, ST. LOUIS, MO. 



P1-EA8E MAD AM) HA^D TO THAT KEIGHBUK WHO WISHES TO EMIOHATK. 



ST. LOUIS: 
TIMES I'KINTINti HOUSE, , 

l.SS-2. 




Class _::£A_TJ^ 

Book \ /\/^^(? 



/h^ 



bast=south: 



MISSOURI. 



THE COUNTIES IMMEDIATELY ADJOINING AND CONTIGUOUS TO 
THE GREAT RIVER AND THE CITY OF ST. LOUIS. 



THEIR RESOURCES— ADVANTAGES — SOILS — CLI- 
MATE— PRODUCTS— MINERAL DEPOSITS 
—WATER POWERS, ETC. 



Bv N. W. BLISS. 



PUBLISHED BY 

UmOfi MINING AND SMELTING COMPANYy 

Old Mines. Waskinqton County, Mo., 
AND 

WASHINGTON LAND AND MINING COMPANY, 

Kingston Furnace, Washington CouNTr, MO. 



ST. LOUIS ADDRESS : 

C. S. GREELEY, Preaident U. M. & S. Co.-and W. L. & M. Co., 

620 N. SECOND STREET, ST. LOTIIS, MO. 



ISSUED UNDER THE AUTHORITY AND WITH THE INDORSEMENT OF THE 
MISSOURI IMMIGRATION SOCIETY. 






ST. LOUIS: 

TIMPIS PRINTING HOUSE, FIFTH AND CHESTNUT STUEETS^ 

1882 



-^J Trauafer 



THE CENTER OF THE CONTINENT 



WHERE IT IS, WHAT IT IS, AND WHY YOU 
SHOULD GO THERE. 



A DESCRIPTION OF A REGION WITHIN FIFTY MILES OF THE 

GREAT CITY OF ST. LOUIS, YET OFFERING THE 

ADVANTAGES OF A NEW COUNTRY. 



Good farming lands, rich mineral deposits, forests of 
wood, abundance of water, in a healthy country, close to 
one of the great primary markets of the world, with low 
rates of taxation, no debt, schools, churches, roads, and 
public improvements already paid for, and yet land selling 
at from $5 to $25 per acre. A great mystery ! 

THE MYSTERY EXPLAINED I 

Why emigration has been going to sterile lands ; to prairie 
lands without fencing or fuel ; to dry and thirsty lands 
"where no water is," and where one crop out of three is a 
failure ; to land distant from market and difficult to culti- 
vate and impossible to irrigate. 



lPemis|c.OjL jf Rail Road 

o/HornecsV. W W ,,. ^„ t, ,j 



MISSOURI. 



Lying just across the Mississippi River from the great 
and well-settled State of Illinois, and co-terminous with its 
southern half, as also with the narrow western end of 
Kentucky, is the great State of Missouri. 

In area, the eighth State in the Union, and larger than 
any State east of or bordering upon the great river (ex- 
cepting Minnesota), she figures in round numbers 65,350 
square miles, or 41,824,000 acres. 

With an extreme length from north to south of 282 
miles, by a breadth of 348 miles, bounded by Illinois, 
Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Arkansas, the State lies in 
the very heart of the country, the geographical center of 
the United States. 

Situated between the parallels of latitude 36 ° 30' , and 
40"^ 30' north, it occupies the most salubrious and health- 
ful portion of the Temperate Zone,. subject neither to the 
blizzards of the Northwest, nor the northers of the 
Southwest. 

Lying, as it does, midway between the snowy regions of 
British America and the semi-tropical region of the Gulf, 
and centrally between the Alleghany and Rocky Moun- 
tain's, it is the Central State in 



WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



THE VALLEY OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 

Of which Governor Johnson was not guilty of exaggera- 
tion when he said before the Immifrration Convention of 
Missouri: "We look in vain over the globe's expanse 
for any other tract of such immensity, having similar 
physical features. The Mississippi, the Missouri, the Red, 
the Arkansas, the Ohio, and the Illinois, having 12,000 
miles of navigable waters, furnish a series of main arteries 
of commerce unequaled elsewhere, while no valley of the 
earth presents so uniform and harmonious a network of 
ever-supplying tributaries, which, coursing in every direc- 
tion, pour their waters into a channel that bosoms a river 
unrivaled in natural magnitude and extent, flowing onward 
for thousands of miles, and sweeping directly out into 
ocean waters.'" 

POPULATION. 

This great valley is capable of sustaining a population 
of greater density than any other equal extent of the 
earth's surface ; and yet, it now has barely an average 
of twenty to the square mile, while England, with its 
primogeniture and hereditary land system and consequent 
accumulation of vast estates in individual hands, has 
more than 400 to the same space. 

This great region, therefore, is scarcely occupied, much 
less subdued, and its fertile soil, its healthful climate, its 
abundant water, and its inexhaustible mines (both of ores 
and of the fuel tor their reduction and manufacture into 
finished forms) is destined to furnish happy and com- 
fortable homes to thousands and tens of thousands of 
immigrants yet to come. 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 



AN EMPIRE. 

It has resulted from a variety of causes that this great 
State — an empire in extent — has been neglected and left 
•comparatively unoccupied, while the States bounding Mis- 
souri (with the exception of Arkansas), have received 
streams and even floods of immigrants, and long been 
well settled up, their lands reduced to cultivation, and 
improvements made which have largely advanced the 
selling prices, not only of the lands thus improved, but 
also naturally of all the remaining unoccupied lands held 
•on speculation. 

The chief cause of this neglect of Missouri as a home 
for immigrants, and with it all minor causes for preferring 
other and less advantageous locations, were wiped out as 
with a sponge by the war and consequent legislation and 
change of feelings and views of public policy. 

IMMIGRATION CONVENTION. 

An overwhelming evidence of this was given in April, 
1880, in the assembling at St. Louis of. a grand Immigra- 
tion Convention of the State, solely for the purpose of 
setting forth the advantages of this Central Slate as a 
location for those seeking homes, and to give a cordial 
invitation and assurance of hearty welcome to all such as 
should hereafter choose this State for their permanent 
residence. 

On the floor of that convention met delegates from the 
entire one hundred and fourteen counties of the State, 
with a single exception, and from that lone county a 
report was sent in later giving its local advantages and 



WASHINGTCJN COUNTS' 



description, showing a desire to exist there, as in all other 
parts of the State, to welcome new comers. 

In no other State has there been such a universal ex- 
pression of a desire for and good will towards immigrants. 
Among the more recent causes of the attraction of im- 
migrants to other and less favored States than Missouri 
are the following : 

LAND GRANTS. 

The large grants of public lands made to railroad com- 
panies, which, while it doubled the price of the alternate 
sections, thereby recouping the Government the amount of 
the grant, and brought them more rapidly into market by 
reason of the new facilities of transportation furnished by 
the building of the roads, at the same time enabled the 
companies themselves to sell the lands thus granted them 
at still higher prices, on time, at a fair rate of interest. 

This made every railroad company thus favored both an 
immigration society and a land agency, and well have they 
fulfilled the duties and responsibinties of both positions. 
They have advertised their lands without stint and regard- 
less of expense, giving glowing and detailed descriptions^ 
with illustrations, showing the condition of settlers, farms^ 
houses, villages, etc., at various periods of time, during 
the settling up of their (mostly) [)rairie regions; offering 
free passes from local offices, to go and examine lands, 
and long time for payment. And as a very large 
proportion of domestic emigration, as well as all foreign 
immigrants now "go West" by rail instead of by wagon ^ 
as was the case when Illinois and the States east and 
north of her were being settled, it has resulted naturally 
that immigration has clung to east and west railroad 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 



routes, and followed such lines of road, looking for cheap 
and unoccupied lands, until their pioneers have reached 
the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, far removed both from 
a market and base of supplies, and engaged (many of 
them) in trying experiments upon drouthy and even 
alkaline plains, perhaps to turn back later eastward both 
disgusted and "busted." 

And how fares it with those who remain ? At vast dis- 
tances from any great primary market, without competing 
lines of railroads, they find, when it is too late, that in 
buying limited and through tickets to the remote points 
where the lands of the railroad companies are situated, 
with no " stop-over " privileges to examine intermediate 
districts, they have been 

PENNY WISE AND POUND FOOLISH. 

For in saving a few cents or dollars in the purchase of 
their tickets, they have mortgaged themselves to the extent 
of large freights on long hauls over the railroad whose 
officials so generously (?) gave them a " short pass " to 
examine lands, on all they have to export or import for the 
term of their natural lives, and perhaps of their children 
after them. 

But the mortgage upon the settler sometimes defeats its 
own ends, as is at present the case with Nebraska barley, 
the freight rates being prohibitory, deprives the railroad of 
its carrying trade, and the farmer of his market. Result ; 
he must grind and feed his barley, if he has any stock to 
feed it to, and burn his corn for fuel, because the freight 
out deducts too much from its value to permit its shipment, 
while the freight on coal in, adds too much to its cost to 



10 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

allow him to purchase it. How difiereut the state of things 
with the settler in East-South Missouri, close to St. Louis, 
one of the Great Primary Grain Markets of the 
world. He is practically at the market, and his freights 
hence to Liverpool by river and ocean, are to-day a shade 
less than the all-rail freights to New York, in our own 
country, so that in relation to the foreign market, the 
settler here is practically at New York City, on his way to 
the world's markets. 

MORAL. 
In seeking a home for your life and that of your family 
Go slowly ! Go freely ! And look out for special induce- 
ments. 

IMMIGRATION. 

This great railroad rush for the " Far West" succeeded 
in point of time those other causes for the neglect of 
Missouri as a home for immigrants that were wiped out by 
the war. 

It is only since the great State Immigration Convention 
of April, 1880, that a steady and reliable stream of immi- 
grants has poured into the State, and these coming by 
rail, have gone largely into Northern, Northwestern, and 
Southwestern Missouri, into prairie regions — and here 
a word about prairie regions and settlements : They are 
undoubtedly regions "fair to look upon," lying, as they 
do, ready for the plow, and entirely open for all im- 
provements, including tree culture. 

CAPITALISTS. 

But they are regions adapted to the capitalist rather than 
to the man of moderate means. To one who has the means 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 11 

to buy and break and fence, to build and stock and wait, 
deriving meanwhile no income from his new purchase, but 
on the contrary, losing for the time being the interest on 
iiis investment, and have added to that the positive 
expenditure of taxes and all the assessments for roads, 
bridges, schools, etc., of a new country, and one costly to 
build in and only possible to build in for cash, and not 
only without income, but with everything of fencing, fuel 
or building material to buy, and that from a distance, for 
cash, with railroad freights and hauling from depot added ; 
to such a one a prairie settlement may not be an impossi- 
bility, but even advantageous. 

But for the immigrant of moderate means the con- 
dition of the settler in a timbered region has many 
advantages over one in the prairie. He has no fenc- 
ing to buy or haul ; he makes his rails along the line 
of his fence, and uses his tojDS for fuel. His own land 
also furnishes him his building material. If he burns 
his wood into charcoal for furnaces, as he can do in the 
region of East-South Missouri, he makes the coal pay for 
clearing and fencing the land, and for a part of the pur- 
chase of the land itself. He is not required to hire an 
expensive team to "break" his land, as prairie is broken 
at a cost frequently greater than the original cost of the 
land itself, and then wait a season for the sod to rot, but 
he can put in a crop the first day that his land is cleared. 
It is true he will have roots and stumps to contend with 
for a while, but has he not large compensations in having 
the early use of his land, his fuel, fencing, and building 
material from it, and also an income from his coal or wood, 
or ties and timber from the first? 



12 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

A timbered region, therefore, is one eminently well 
adapted to the wants and necessities of the immigrant of 
moderate means^ and in that respect, as is many others 
hereinafter to be detailed. East-South Missouri is a region 
that should be a favorite one with persons of that class. 

LEAGUE TRACTS. 

Another reason (and it has been a controling one) why 
lands so near the great City of St. Louis and the great 
highway of the Mississippi River, have not been settled 
up and reduced to cultivation by the local population, lies 
in the fact that prior to the acquisition of this region by 
the United States the Spanish Governors made numerous 
grants of land to pioneers for settlement and improve- 
ment, in large tracts — French league square tracts — con- 
taining over 6,000 acres each, and covering territory 
something over nine square miles each in extent. These 
large tracts have been held by the heirs of the original 
grantees or by mining companies, who have purchased 
from such heirs, ever since in the same large tracts as 
originally granted, mining and farming lands together, but 
held wholly for the uses and purposes of mining. 

MINING COMPANIES. 

But the day has come when it is a self-evident propo- 
sition that the best interests of the community, and indeed 
of the mining companies themselves, require that these 
large tracts be cut up and surveyed out into suitable size 
for farms, and sold to those who will occupy and cultivate 
them, and thus add to the productive capacity and taxable 
wealth of the country. 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 13 

That is the conclusion at which the companies issuing 

this pamphlet have arrived, and they propose to act upon 

it, and offer for sale to colonists and immigrants all their 

extensive and valuable landed estate, situated in the 

county of Washington, and State of Missouri. And the 

fact that these large tracts still remain unbroken in almost 

first hands renders this region just the place for colonies. 

These large tracts, lying in solid bodies, can be bought at 

lower figures when sold in a body than when sub-divided 

and sold in smaller lots, and with their varied character, 

their mill streams, town sites, etc., can and will furnish 

locations to suit every taste and trade and business 

to constitute a community with a varied and profitable 

industry. 

WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

Washington County is located in Southeast Missouri, 
forty miles south of St. Louis, and forty miles west of the 
Mississippi River (being separated from St. Louis County 
and the river by Jefferson County only), and is intersected 
by the 38th parallel of latitude. The county has a total 
area of 458,960 acres, of which two-thirds are tillable, 
one-fourth of the whole being valley or bottom lands. 
Of all these tillable lands it has been estimated that not 
over 50,000 acres are yet reduced to cultivation. The 
vast remainder is covered with immense forests containing 
a timber growth of great value, consisting of pine, oak, 
ash, hickory, elm, maple, sycamore, walnut, etc., suitable 
for building and manufacturing purposes, for fencing, fuel, 
coaling, etc. 

TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES. 

The surface of the county is hilly and broken, never 
rising into mountains nor spreading out in extensive plains. 



14 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



it presents a rolling surface, something like New England 
with the mountains left out, thus securing the best possible 
drainage and insuring consequent health and freedom from 
malaria. 

It is well watered by Big River, Mineral Fork, Fourche 
au Renault, Courtois, Cedar, Big and Little Indian, 
Brazil, Bates, Clear, Old Mines, and numerous other 
streams of pure crystal water, fed by everlasting springs^ 
which nearly everywhere over the county burst from the 
hill sides. 

WATER POWER. 

These water courses, fed as they are by living springs, 
flowing rapidly with considerable fall in so short a distance, 
from a region elevated i ,000 feet above the river level at 
St. Louis, present to the miller and manufacturer one of 
the best fields for investment in cheap power that can be 
cheaply and economically improved and utilized anywhere 
to be found in the West. 

The great economy of water powers over steam, where 
the cost of the original improvement or "plant" is not 
too great in the daily running and wear and tear and 
expenses, is too well-known to need mention. The water 
power of this county, though not great at any one point, 
is ample to furnish convenient and sufficient powers of 
from twenty to sixty horse power at very many different 
points. Indeed, the mill sites on the main streams need 
not be further apart than the distance required by the back 
water of the mill ponds, and yet but very few are 
improved and utilized. Like our forests and the land 
upon which they stand, they await the advent of capital 
and enterprise for their improvement and profiitable devel- 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 15 



opment. The manufacturing establishments now in oper- 
ation and running by water or steam in the county are 
seventeen lead furnaces, two slag furnaces, two iron fur- 
naces, one zinc furnace, ten saw mills, three planing mills, 
one barytes mill, twelve flouring mills, two corn mills, 
two tanneries, three carding machines, two broom facto- 
ries, and one cheese factory, and yet not a fiftieth part of 
our mill sites are occupied. 

Of the various kinds of business -for which this re";ion 
furnishes at once raw material in unusual cheapness and 
abundance, and easily and cheaply improved water power 
for 'its manufacture, but a very small percentage is yet 

pursued. 

SOILS. 

The soils of the cou-nty are varied : those of the valleys 
and bottoms being a rich black loam — alluvial — enriched 
by the annual washings from the higher lands as well as 
by the sediment deposited by annual overflows, and are 
very fertile and productive. The soils of the uplands 
generally are a clay loam, created from and based upon 
the universal limestone of this region, and are unexcelled 
for wheat, oats, grass, tobacco, fruits, grapes, etc. 

ORES. 

The mineral lands are not only valuab e for their ores, 
but also valuable for timber and pasture, and while most 
of the untillable lands of the county seem to be especially 
occupied by productive mines, paying mines are also 
frequently found in the midst of cultivated fields, and as 
in the lead region of Galena and the coal region of St. 
Clair County, Illinois, two crops are raised, one from the 
surface and one from beneath, on the same land. 



; 



16 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

BLUE GRASS. 

It has been truly said that the country which has a 
limestone soil, has blue grass, and the land that has blue 
grass has the basis of all agricultural p'rosperity. This is 
eminently true of this county. On the tops of the hills 
and in the depths of the valleys — everywhere — the rock 
formation is the lower magnesian limestone, furnishing 
rock for foundations and for building, as well as for lime 
with which to lay up the walls in the greatest abundance, 
and at a cost scarcely greater than picking up and hauling. 
The resulting soil and the climate (being on the same 
parallel as the far-famed blue grass region of Kentucky), 
make this region also the natural home of this sweet and 
nutritious grass. It is onlv necessary to take oft' the 
shade and keep off" the stock for a while, to have it spring 
up spontaneously, as has occurred in very many instances 
in this county. The writer of this cut oft' the underbrush 
on a piece of partially cleared land, run a harrow over it, 
and sowed one piece in blue grass and one in orchard 
grass. A good catch and growth was the result, and 
although the ground has never been plowed, the grass has 
survived the extraordinary drouth of 1881, and furnishes 
to-da}"^ a fine winter pasture, having been inclosed a year 
ago with cultivated fields, and so not pastured during the 
summer. 

OTHER VALUABLE GRASSES. 

But among the grasses adapted to luxurious growth 
in this region, even the invaluable blue grass is entitled to 
no especial pre-eminence. Other varieties are fully its 
equals, and, in some respects, its superiors. Orchard 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 17 

grass has longer and more numerous roots, forms a 
heavier sod, grows faster after being grazed, and gives a 
more continuous pasture, besides being capable like many- 
other grasses of being cut for hay, especially when sown 
with red clover, as it blooms at the same time with that 
valuable forage and soil renewing plant. 

Timothy, Red Top, Hungarian, Millet and other tame 
grasses, do well here and yield good crops. 

ALFALFA. 

Alfalfa also has been thoroughly tried here, and, upon 
some of the lands now offered for sale and has proved the 
most valuable forage plant known to the writer — having 
been cut four times a year for hay, and for soiling pur- 
poses, could have been cut every three weeks, from the 
middle of April to the middle of November, being ex- 
ceedingly palatable and nutritious to cattle, horses, sheep, 
mules and hogs, and with milch cows, improving the qual- 
ity of the milk while increasing the quantity ; it excels all 
other forage plants in usefulness. 

Of it Mr. WycofF says : " For milch-cows it is superior 
to other hay — it excites the secretions;" and Mr. C. F. 
Reed, speaking officially as President of the State Board 
•of Agriculture, of California, says of Alfalfa : " That cut 
when it is in bloom, it makes hay of good quality for stock 
of all kinds, but especially milch-cows ; that according to 
the testimony of good dairymen, cows taken from the 
native grasses and pastured on it, will increase in product 
of milk, butter, and cheese, sixty to seventy per cent. 
Most careful and accurate tests made by dairymen in Cali- 
fornia, show that feeding milch-cows upon Alfalfa, increases 



18 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

the quantity and improves the quahty of the milk, at the 
same time, and almost equally, a result quite different from 
the usual one, where quantity is increased only at the ex- 
pense of quality." ' Mr. E. W. Hilgard, in his Report on 
the Agriculture and soils of California, says: "Undoubt- 
edly the most valuable result of the search after forage 
crops adapted to the California climate, is the introduction 
of the culture of Alfalfa, a plant able to withstand a drouth 
,so protracted as to kill out even more resistant plants than 
Red Clover." It was to avoid being subject to drouth, in 
the matter of having an abundance or deficiency of forage, 
that Alfalfa, better known to Europeans by the name of 
French Lucern, was obtained and sown here in east-south 
Missouri. 

HAY WITHOUT RAIN. 

And here as in Cahfornia it has proved itself a prime 
forage plant, full of saccharine matter, and one whose 
roots go so deep as to render it independent of drouth. In 
1879, when complaints come from all over the country, that 
the timothy meadows would not pay to cut, four full crops 
of this bright and succulent grass were harvested. 

Fed to mules when freshly cut in the early Spring — first 
week in May — as if green-soiling them, they would neglect 
their corn or ground feed for it, as they would later for the 
new-dried hay. Fed from the mow during winter, mixed 
with other forage, the shoats in the yard show their appre- 
ciation of the food best adapted to their use, by carefully 
selecting out the Alfalfa hay, and eating it with relish, 
while all other kinds of stock equally show their preference 
for it. 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 19 

RANGE. 

At present there exists ample range in this region for 
many herds of both cattle and sheep. The pineries that 
have been cut off are left to grow up again in young pine, 
and furnish the very best range for sheep, and bid fair to 
remain an open range for many years yet. 

STOCK GROWING. 

The stock-growing capacity of this region has been 
equally overlooked and unappreciated. While not ex- 
tensive enough for the business conducted on the scale 
adopted on the great plains, nor large enough to accom- 
modate a great multitude of stock men, yet for a moder- 
ate number of medium-sized herds, there begins, between 
the Meramec and Mississippi rivers, and within a day's 
horseback ride of the city of St. Louis, a range for stock 
unsurpassed at least for quality ; a region well-watered, well- 
timbjered and shaded, and clothed with nutritious grasses, 
where cattle can be herded, and pastured, and driven 
gradually southward to winter in the canebrakes of the 
Arkansas, and in Spring to return upon the growing grass, 
until they are within a day or two's drive of their market, 
— a far shorter drive than the Texans have to Kansas, and 
thence East ; or, if it is wished to keep the stock on the 
range, the pineries and saw-mills will supply cheap and 
abundant material for shelter, while the crops raised in the 
valleys can be cheaply bought for feeding during the win- 
ter. The close vicinity to a great city and ample means 
of transportation not only enables the stock man to pur- 
chase his supplies cheaply and get them quickly, but also 
furnishes him a ready market for his calves and early 



20 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

lambs as well as for his cattle, sheep and wool, when ready 

for market. 

FOR SHEEP RAISING, 

The green hills of Vermont can not surpass this region. 
There is absolutely no foot-rot or other sheep disease, and 
the mildness of the climate renders the necessary feeding 
and shelter much less, and the growth of wool greater. 
In a country so well-drained^ so little subject to storms, 
with no two seasons for long periods together, continuously 
wet or dry, watered by living springs, it should be, and 
■will be, the shepherd's paradise. 

Putting his sheep on the range during the Summer, the 
shepherd having a blue and orchard grass pasture, fenced 
and not depastured during the Summer, will have a winter 
pasture ample to take his sheep through the winter in this 
mild climate, with feeding on hay or fodder only when 
snow covers the ground. Grain-feeding will, of course, 
increase the weight of the wool, and the size, and the 
vigor of the lambs, as well as give increased vitality and 
strength to the flock, but it can be optional here, and ac- 
i;ordinor to the means and views of the flock-master. 

Judging by the effect of Alfalfa, when fed to cattle, 
mules, and hogs, it would seem that if fed to sheep, it 
would entirely obviate the necessity or usefulness of feed- 
ing them grain at all. The impending boom in the sheep 
business, can not fail to occupy a section so thoroughly 
adapted to its successful prosecution, as is Southeast Mis- 
souri. 

DAIRYING. 

It follows, as a matter of course, that a country natur- 
ally undulating, and consequently well drained, well 
watered by living springs and crystal streams, having the 



I 

SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. ^I 



native soil and climate of blue grass, and producing the 
most nutritious wild grasses, while adapted to the profitable 
production of all the tame grasses and other forage plants, 
including the Lupines and Lucerns, can not fail to be 
especiall}'^ adapted to successful dairying, and it has 
proved to be so in the few cases yet tried, the gilt-edged 
butter being all contracted for &t St. Louis at prices rang- 
ing from 40 to 50 cents per pound. Snow rarely covers the 
ground for one continuous week, so that cows are not 
obliged to be confined in stables, but can have daily exer- 
cise in the open air and fields, while at a short distance 
St. Louis at once furnishes an ample market for the pro- 
duct, and its great flour mills an abundant supply of bran 
and shipstuffs for feeding, and its oil mills linseed meal or 
oil cake, for fattening purposes. 

MINERALS AND MINING. 

Nor are the minerals and mines of East-South Missouri 
amoncr the least of her advantages as a home for immi- 
grants — on the contrary, take them and their effect, all in 
all, they may well be said to be among the greatest. 

To those who have seen the west settle up, it is well- 
known that a settler in a prairie regio^ must come pre- 
pared, in addition to all the expenditures hereinbefore 
mentioned, to live a 3^ear or two, buying all he needs, and 
this formerly furnished those already established their 
most profitable market for their crops, and it was known 
as the " Immigrant Market." When that market closed, 
then exportations began, and the farmer had to take off" 
from the value of the crop, the cost of the haul to the 
depot, the freight to the distant market, the commissions 



22 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



for selling as well as dray age, storage, insurance, etc. At 
the same time, he had to compete with those living much 
nearer the same market. In this mining region, however, 
it has been the rule, ever since the acquisition of the coun- 
try, to import food to supply a deficiency of that grown 
here, for consumption by miners, and those engaged in 
industries connected with ores and their reduction, so that 
the farmer in this region has generally obtained for his 
farm produce, St. Louis prices, not with hauling, freight, 
drayage, storage, and commissions deducted, but often 
with all these added to the St. Louis prices, and the profits 
of the middle-man added as well. 

That is the case at the present moment. Corn being 
worth 60 to 70 cents at St. Louis, and $1.00 to $1.10 here. 
Nor is it in this indirect way alone that the mines here are 
of advantage to the settler and farmer. They furnish him 
a market for his wood, in charcoal for smelting or steam 
producing ; they afford him a large amount of hauling and 
labor. 

His plowing, planting, and cultivating is generally done 
in three months, his harvesting and threshing in less than 
two months more, taking less than half the year, and in 
exclusively farmii% regions the farmer and laborer is 
comparatively idle or unprotitably engaged in doing 
*' chores" the other half of the year. Here it is easily 
practicable to make this half year ver}^ profitable by the 
active use of teams and hands. But the final and great 
advantage is: that if crops fail by reason of drouth, to 
which all sections of the country were subject last year, 
then the privileges of mining and the industries con- 
nected therewith are invaluable. And so they are proving 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 23 

this present winter, all here being busily engaged with no 
suffering or complaint or increase of pauperism after one 
of the severest drouths and consequent loss of crops 
known since the settlement of the Mississippi Valley. 

In prairie regions last fall it was proposed, and the 
county courts were petitioned to undertake public works 
that before were unthought of, and for which there was 
no pressing necessity, on the plea that the counties would 
have to support the laboring class anyway, and might as 
well get some labor out of them in return. 

Nor is it doubtful that new-comers unused to mines and 
mining, would take thereto and to their profit also, if such 
a necessity as the present arose. It is well known that no 
population on the face of the globe (not absolutely no- 
madic) emigrates with such readiness as American popu- 
lations ; nor is there any people who s<> readily take up 
new industries, and adapt themselves to new conditions. 
This has been fully illustrated in the development of the 
mines of California, Nevada, Colorado,, etc. Probably 
not one person in one thousand of all those who have 
swelled the tide flowing to the mining regions, ever saw a 
mine, and many not even a mineral before going to Eldo- 
rado, yet their success has been such as to give them a de- 
served place beside experts. 

In this region, where it is the rule instead of the exception 
for persons of limited means to farm during the summer 
and mine during the winter, the convenience of living in 
a mining region is often still further taken advantage of 
by one miner continuing to mine during the summer while 
the partner works the land they rent or own, aad out of 
his earnings paying the current expenses of both, so that 



24 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



when the crop is gathered they divide it between them free 
from drawbacks of any store bills whatever. It is no- 
small privilege and advantage. 

The lead mines here were discovered and opened in 
1720 by Philip Francis Renault, of France, and have been 
continuously worked since. For more than fifty years 
past the average production of pig lead in this one 
county has averaged 3,000,000 pounds per annum, show- 
ing by its uniform rate of production that mining here is 
as steady and reliable an industry as any other that is 
pursued. 

Nor is lead ore (Galena) the only mineral to be had 
here by digging in the earth. Its gangue or vein matter is 
also valuable, being in some places 

BARYTES, 

of which over twelve million pounds have been shipped in 
a single year from a portion only of this county, and 
which by reason of its abundance and the ease with which 
■it is obtained, furnishes to its miners even a more steadily 
remunerative employment than mining for lead ore itself. 
It also furnishes a very large amount of hauling, and 
employs many men in its mining, manufacture, and trans- 
portation. It should all be ground in this county by water 
power, and sent to the market in packages (also made 
here), and thus sent forward with all the added value of 
manufacture, the farmers of the vicinity furnishing the 
supplies for the men thus engaged. 

Here is a very profitable and advantageous industry, for 
which the raw material is abundant and inexhaustible, and 
the market for the product constantly extending that 
awaits capital and enterprise, and the utilization of our 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 25. 



reliable water powers for its development into a perma- 
nent industry. 

Iron ores also exist in various parts of the county, and 
when we consider how scarce the localities are becoming- 
where it is even possible to make charcoal iron, by reason 
of the rapid reduction of the world's timber supply, it will 
be seen that Washington County with its superabundant 
forests, furnishes to the charcoal iron maker a first-class 
location for that industry, even if he has to ship in his 
richer ores for reduction. 

Zinc ores, carbonates and sulphurets also exist, and are 
profitably mined and exported. 

Ball clay, pipe clay, and other fire and pottery clays are 
found in the county in connection with the mines, and are 
lying idle, awaiting the workman's hand. 

The population of the county is about 13,000, an in- 
crease of ten per cent only since 1870; children number 
5,500; school fund is $35,684.00, number of schools 68, 
5 being for colored people exclusively. Rate of taxation 
for school purposes, 5 mills, or 50 cents on the $100. 

The public schools are open from 4 to 10 months of the 
year, and are under the supervision of a county superin- 
tendent. Teachers are paid from $35 to $75 per month. 

Bellevue Collegiate Institute is situated at Caledonia, in 
the county, and is well attended by pupils of both sexes, 
both resident and from abroad. St. Louis, with its 
wealth of colleges, professional and preparatory schools, 
is within easy reach for the purposes of higher educa- 
tion. 

FINANCIAL. 

The County has no debt of any kind, and has money in 
the treasury. For the year 1879 °^^ County revenue ex- 



^6 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



ceeded our expenditure over $3,000; the state, county, 
road and school taxes of that year, aggregated only $1.25 
on the $100; property, real and personal, is not assessed 
at more than half its actual cash value. 

RAILROADS. 

The St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern passes through 
the eastern portion of the county, having eight shipping 
points, at one of which were loaded and unloaded 1,231 
cars of bulk freight, in 1878. The St. Louis & San Fran- 
cisco Road passes near the western border of the County. 

OTHER FACILITIES OF TRANSPORTATION. 

Rock roads extend from St. Louis to Hillsboro, the 
county seat of Jefterson County, and up the valley of Big 
River to po nts within ten miles of the Washington County 
line, and .ire largely used for hauling and driving stock 
direct to the city, instead of hauling to the railroad, and 
then paying freight and drayage at the city. 

This business will largely increase, and as there exists 
no county where the material for making good gravel roads 
is so abundant and convenient, the County only awaits 
a denser population, and consequent demand for gravel 
roads, to see them extended through every neighborhood. 

SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS. 

There are thirty organizations in the county ; Catholic, 
Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist. Society is good. 
The people are kind and hospitable. The laws are en- 
forced and obeyed, and violent and aggravated crimes are 
of rare occurrence. 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 27 

For fruit growing and market gardening the County is 
well adapted and well situated. Peaches — in many locali- 
ties — are an uncertain crop here as well as elsewhere, but 
there are localities in this county where peaches have not 
failed for thirty years, not even after the hard winter of 
j88o-8i, and during the hot summer and drouth of 1881. 

MARKETS. 

As before remarked, St. Louis and the South afford 
(comparatively) distant markets, and being so near St. 
Louis, one of the chief of the great primary markets of 
the world, with a free river and cheap barge line freight- 
age to New Orleans, and thence through the jetties to the 
ocean, will always insure to the inhabitants of Southeast 
Missouri, low rates of freight over short lines on exports 
as against high rates over long lines of railroad from the 
great plains. 

There were shipped from the various railroad stations 
-of this county in 1879: of pig lead, 14,462,042 pounds; 
zinc, 51 cars ; barytes, 267 cars ; wheat, 80 cars : hogs, 40 
■cars ; cattle, 2,500 head ; horses and mules, 275 head. 
Of the flour made from the wheat shipped, and of the 
hog product, there was no doubt re-shipped into the 
count}^ for distribution and sale an equal amount of flour 
and bacon, thus wasting large sums upon transportation 
and middle-men for the want of capital to buy and grind 
the wheat and cut and pack the hogs here produced, show- 
ing that the home market is equal and often superior to the 
5t. Louis market — a state of facts existing in but few 
•other Western regions — and this will continue more and 
more to be the case as our home industries become estab- 
lished, and manufactories of our raw material build up. 



28 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 



THE PRICE OF LANDS. 

It is here that this section of the country has its great- 
est advantage of all for the immigrant. It can be asserted- 
without any fear of successful contradiction, as the asser- 
tion is based on published statistics easily accessible to all 
that no other section of the United States to-day offers so 
large a quantity of lands of so good a quality, at so low a 
price, within such short distance of any large city and 
lines of river and railroad transportation. 

Unimproved lands are held at from one dollar ( less 
than lowest government price) to five dollars per acre. 

Improved lands at from five to twenty-five dollars, ac- 
cording to location, quality of lands, buildings, improve- 
ments, etc. 

Lands in the pineiies that have been cut ofi', and are 
now growing up again with a thick growth of young pine 
can be bought at one dollar per acre, and this within fifty 
miles of the metropolis of the Mississippi Valley. In no 
other part of this country can such a sheep range be had 
for any such sum. 

East of St. Louis, in Illinois, at the same distance, upland 
prairie, with only the scantiest improvements, mere shells 
of houses of the balloon frame -'persuasion," and no 
fences to speak of, are held and sold at prices ranging 
from $40 to $100 per acre, the latter figure when near a 
small town, and very little fair farming land can be had 
there with ordinary improvements for less than $50 per 
acre. 

It is true that those prairie lands are blacker in color, 
and are for a time better adapted to the growth of corn 
than the clay loam lands of this county, but while they 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 29 

have more htimus, they have less of the mineral manures, 
and consequently their fertility, while greater for a time 
in one direction, is less lasting than the mineral soils here 
and not as well adapted to varied farming, in raising dif- 
ferent crops of grass and small grain, which alone will 
renew and keep up fertility for a series of years. 

BUILDING MATERIALS. 

To no other people on earth is the home of such 
supreme importance as to the English people, and the 
populations which spring from them. While the love of the 
German broadens to include the whole of his Vaterland, 
and the Frenchman, in his gregarious life in villages and 
love of society, can scarcely be said to have a home at all 
in the English sense of the word. A home of his own — 
private and free from interference on the part of any one — 
is a prirne necessity to the Englishman and American. 
With them the legal maxim of the English common law 
that every man's house is his castle has a real meaning, 
coming home to every heart. It is, therefore, a matter of 
great importance to such to know beforehand what are the 
facilities he will find in the locality he may select for his 
new home, for building this castle, the house and home of 
himself and his children after him. 

We have in our widely extended country localities 
where "dug-outs" are fashionable, holes in the ground, 
earthed and sodded over, or more aristocratic still — log 
pens — with heavy transverse beams above, brushed, 
earthed, and sodded, to be succeeded later by balloon 
frames and lath and plaster, with a prayer on the part of 
the owner that the wind may not blow them away. 



30 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

Here in Southeast Missouri every taste and every degree 
of financial ability in the building of the home can be 
suited. If a log cabin is desired, the timber to build it 
and the neighbors to help raise it are free and abundant. 
If a frame house, our pineries and saw mills will suppl}'^ 
timbers and flooring, siding, laths, shingles, etc. If a 
brick house is wanted, the top soil in many places with a 
portion of the clay beneath furnishes the desired material, 
while the larger portion of the cost of brick, viz , the 
fuel to burn them, is eliminated by reason of the abund- 
ance and cheapness of timber. But cheaper and better 
than all is the material nature has furnished here in inex- 
haustible quantities, and in the greatest profusion. The 
dolohiite or Magnesian limestone of the country, of which 
countless loads can be picked up in the valleys and on the 
slopes of the hills without quarrying, which will also, with 
the aid of the same cheap fuel, burn into a lime of extra 
strength, with which to lay up and bind together ithe rock 
into a stone house, which for soHdity and lasting qualities 
will vie with the castle of old. Building of rock inside 
concrete boxes one can escape the expense of the skilled 
mason and build his home himself. 

COUNTRY ROADS. 

As for the building of houses, barn-s, sheds, outbuildings 
and shelter of every kind, the materials exist in east-south 
Missouri, in an abundance, cheapness, and convenience 
known to few other regions ; so for the making and keep- 
ing in repair of good country roads, bridges, and culverts, 
few regions are so lavish of the raw materials. 

The country itself is so rolling and well-drained, and so 
free from flats and swamps, that the natural roads are ex- 



SOUTHEAST MISSOURI. 31 

cellent during the greater portion of the year, while in no 
other part of the United States can they be made good and 
permanent at so low a cost as here. Ditching, turnpiking 
and graveling are all that is needed to make them the best 
and cheapest highways in existence. So well drained are 
the routes naturally, that the ditching, turnpiking, culvert- 
ing and bridging are at a minimum, while the materials for 
culverts and bridges is equally convenient and abundant, 
and millions on millions of loads of the best washed gravel 
fill the beds of our streams, waiting to be hauled out on the 
public roads. 

OBJECT OF THIS PAMPHLET. 

Nor is it the purpose of the companies issuing this 
pamphlet to advertise by it only their own lands. The sale 
of those lands, although large in quantity,' could be ac- 
complished with far less trouble and expense. 

The companies are composed of old merchants of St. 
Louis, who are interested in every way in the settlement 
and development of this region so near to and intimately 
connected with their city, and it is partly to supply a 
long felt want of a description of the advantages of this 
region for immigrants, that this course is taken, and this 
pamphlet issued, calling the attention of colonists and im- 
migrants to this whole region and leaving them free to come 
and examine and buy lands of any one that has them for 
sale, and will sell the best lands the cheapest. It is on 
that account that they call attention to the very large 
amount of lands for sale and the very low prices ruling as 
compared with all other localities and especially with por- 
tions of Illinois, equally near St. Louis. 

The companies issuing this pamphlet own and offer for 
sale 14,000 acres of selected lands at prices ranging from. 



32 WASHINGTON COUNTY. 

$5 to $25 per acre, at distances from railroad depots 
varying from one to fifteen miles, covering every kind of 
location and soil — alluvial bottom and clay loam upland — 
improved and unimproved ; with mines opened, worked, 
and yet to be discovered ; with log houses or frame 
or brick ; with furnaces, mills, stores, blacksmith and 
wagon shops and village dwellings, so as to afford ample 
choice and selection for farming, mining, merchandizing, 
or manufacturing ; with improved and unimproved water 
powers, etc. 

League square trads wall be sold as a whole to those 
who pool their means to buy, later to be divided up and 
-distributed among the buyers, or the stock represented by 
the lands will be sold so the buyers can go right to work 
as a corporate body or they will be cut up and surveyed 
out into farms of sizes to suit customers when on the 
ground, giving desired proportion of bottom and upland,, 
cultivated land and timber, corn and wheat land, and 
pasture, with perfect title. 

CONCLUSION. 

While immigration has been pouring into Kansas, 
Texas, and other States, it has been one of the wonders 
of the age that Missouri, offering advantages that can not 
be equaled by any other part of the United States, has 
not received the attention her splendid opportunities 
merit. 

Improved land in Illinois, within 50 to 100 miles of St. 
Louis, sells at from $50 to $100 per acre, where wood 
and water are scarce, and where not one single induce- 
ment can be offered to settlers that is not equally well 
afforded by Missouri. 



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